HC Deb 20 March 1990 vol 169 cc586-7W
Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what consideration his Department has given since June 1979 to setting up an independent body to regulate the accounting and auditing industry.

Mr. Redwood

A comprehensive review of departmental papers since June 1979 has not been attempted. However, in 1986 the Department issued a consultative document which made a number of suggestions on how the eighth EC company law directive on the qualifications of auditors might be implemented in the United Kingdom. Among these was the possibility that a statutory body broadly along the lines of the General Medical Council might be created and have conferred upon it the task of supervising professional accountancy bodies and ensuring that they complied with the directive.

In the light of the responses to that document, the Government decided that the legislation implementing the directive should confer the necessary powers on the Secretary of State, but that he should be able to set up a statutory body and transfer to it many of those powers. Part II of the Companies Act 1989 provides for this arrangement. As the Government made clear during the passage of the Companies Bill, however, we have no present intention to set up a statutory body.

Mr. Austin Mitchell

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he plans to bring into operation section 121 of the Companies Act 1989.

Mr. Redwood

Section 121 will come into force on 1 April. We plan to make regulations under the new section 390B of the Companies Act 1985 (which is inserted into that Act by section 121) in the summer.